[Teresa Edgerton]

CHRONICLES NETWORK: Like Dante’s inferno, in SNAKE AGENT you envision a Hell of many different levels, or perhaps more accurately many different dimensions. SNAKE AGENT is primarily concerned with the infernal dimension closest to our own, where existence is not so very different from life on earth: an all-too-plausible afterlife in which the wicked are endlessly tormented by fiendish machinations of diabolical bureaucracies. Will we be visiting some of the lower levels in the two sequels? And if so, what might we see there that could possibly rival the sublime evil of the Ministry of Epidemics?


LIZ WILLIAMS: I have a Keralan female villain in the next book, DEMON AND THE CITY, who runs a chemical corporation. I am very fond of her. We do see some of the lower levels at some point. It's all based on actual Chinese mythology, however, which suggests the numerous levels, and which is also very bureaucratic. One reviewer hated the bureaucratic nature of hell and wondered why I'd been so unimaginative - but it is as faithful a reflection of Chinese myth as I can make it.


CHRONICLES NETWORK: After so many stand-alone books, what was it about the characters in SNAKE AGENT that made you think it was time to do a series? As occult thrillers, the Detective Inspector Chen books are more in the fantasy vein than science fiction; was there any particular reason for changing genres at this particular time?


LIZ WILLIAMS: SNAKE AGENT was actually written in the late nineties and I got very paranoid about some of the ideas in “Angel,” when that came on TV. DEMON AND THE CITY was written first, with different characters, and then substantially revised. I do enjoy writing in this world and it's a break from my more serious (I hope) fiction. My short fiction is about evenly distributed between fantasy and SF, and I enjoy writing fantasy - getting it published is difficult, however, because both my US and my UK publishers have me very much in the SF camp.


CHRONICLES NETWORK: Ghosts turn up fairly often in your work; are you a fan of ghost stories? Have you had any real-life experiences that might be interpreted as encounters with the supernatural?


LIZ WILLIAMS: I love ghost stories, both folklore and fictional. I've never seen a ghost per se. Many years ago, in the middle of the afternoon, my late partner and I saw a very odd cloud of winged things (about the size of bats) on Glastonbury Tor. I've been a bit wary of talking about this as they sound (and looked) too much like fairies, which in their current incarnations I consider embarrassingly twee. I don't think I could live down seeing a bunch of fairies. I won't even sell them (I run a witchcraft supply shop).

I don't know what the hell they were, but I know what I (and several other people) saw and none of us were on any kind of drug. The shop which I co-run (I'm sitting in it at the moment) is built on the old burial ground of Glastonbury Abbey, and we had to cleanse it (not exorcise, because we don't really do that) before we opened: there was a rather peculiar atmosphere.


CHRONICLES NETWORK: When you began writing SNAKE AGENT, did you already expect that elegant and fascinating demon vice-officer, Zhu Irzh, to play a much larger part than the minor role he was originally given in “Adventures in the Ghost Trade” -- or was he simply one of those characters you invite in for a visit, who decide to move into your story bag and baggage?


LIZ WILLIAMS: No, Zhu Irzh was always there, large as life and twice as unnatural. I seem to write him with worrying ease. He's probably my animus or something.


CHRONICLES NETWORK: To me, there is something of the old-time swashbuckling hero about him. And you mentioned that you’re a fan of Basil Rathbone, who was rather a dashing blade in some of his pictures (albeit as the villain) ... Is there a bit of Guy of Gisbourne or the dastardly Ravenhurst in your demon seneschal?


LIZ WILLAMS: I'm not sure where Zhu Irzh comes from - I suspect he's an amalgamation of people, but he came more or less fully formed. He's very similar to a lot of screen anti-heroes, however.



CHRONICLES NETWORK: All of us who read Snake Agent were particularly fascinated by the setting of this one. What started your interest in Chinese mythology and what sort of research did you do for SA and its sequels?


LIZ WILLIAMS: I've always been interested in Chinese mythology but what really started SA off was a visit to Hong Kong in the early 90s. A friend of mine is a reporter for the South China Morning Post and at the time, she was writing two books about the colony, one on murder and the other on sex, and she was briefly going out with a cop on the HK vice squad. So there was plenty ot material to draw on!



CHRONICLES NETWORK: With such wonderful characters and such an intriguing back story, are you likely to write a prequel telling us how Chen and Inari first met and fell in love? We'd all like to know more.


LIZ WILLIAMS: I might do that at some point but it depends on my publishers! Perhaps a novella would be in order...



CHRONICLES NETWORK: Could you tell us about your latest book, DARKLAND? Although you’ve never avoided risky themes in the past, from the reviews I’ve read, this seems to be your bleakest and most controversial book yet.


LIZ WILLIAMS: It's not a barrel of laughs, but then neither was GHOST SISTER, which is in the same universe and one of the same planets. Reviewers have had a problem deciding whether it's feminist or not: it, and its sequel BLOODMIND, are about female power, the assumption of that power, and its abuse. If anything, it, like BANNER, is a move away from the 'all-female societies are utopian.' But neither do I want to see all-female societies as overwhelmingly negative. It's partly about abuse and collusion in abuse and BLOODMIND covers the same kind of ground.


CHRONICLES NETWORK: In Darkland your heroine deals with her anger and frustration by cutting herself, and you show an even more extreme version of self-mutilation in the short story "Skindancing." Does this theme come up elsewhere in your work? It seems very topical with so many teenagers, especially, dealing with their fears and their sense of helplessness in this way.


LIZ WILLIAMS: I've never suffered from this particular thing myself (and thankfully avoided the sadly typical adolescent problems like eating disorders), but psychological impairment interests me. I have done one story in which the heroine was anorectic, but my agent didn't take to it and it went no further. As far as I can see, cutting is actually a survival tactic as much as an expression of self hatred, but sometimes it goes a very long way and I'm interested in the kinds of pressures that cause someone to take such extreme actions.


CHRONICLES NETWORK: For readers coming to your work for the first time, which of your books or stories would you recommend as a good place to start, and why?


LIZ WILLIAMS: Possibly THE POISON MASTER, because it's a little more accessible than the others. Or SNAKE AGENT, because it's fun! But most of them are stand alones.


CHRONICLES NETWORK: Asking which of your characters you like best is a lot like asking a parent which child is dearest -- the advantage being that ifyou answer the question no one is going to grow up tramautized and resentful. So ... do you have a favorite among all the characters you’ve written about?


LIZ WILLIAMS: Eleres in GHOST SISTER has been with me a long while. I love writing Zhu Irzh in the SNAKE AGENT series and I'm also fond of Ilya Muromyets in NINE LAYERS OF SKY. Troubled blokes, basically! Although I wouldn't call Zhu Irzh 'troubled' because he doesn't think all that deeply!


CHRONICLES NETWORK: What are you reading now, either for entertainment or research?


LIZ WILLIAMS: I've just finished re-reading Zenna Henderson's 'People' series, which I like a great deal. I like her determination to see good in people, and to write stories about it. Despite some of my own writing, and reading, I get very tired of books in which all the characters are bastards, and dreadful things happen relentlessly. I thnk that's a particular kind of unrealism in fiction.


CHRONICLES NETWORK: Are there any books or authors (new or old) that you have recently discovered and are especially excited about?


LIZ WILLIAMS: I've really been enjoying Ian McLeod's THE LIGHT AGES series. Fascinating stuff.


CHRONICLES NETWORK: Speaking of which, what would you say is the main difference between Science Fiction and more traditional forms of fantasy?


LIZ WILLIAMS: SF is science based or least makes a nod to scientific principles. Fantasy is based on magic. The two are sometimes interchangeable and you get some extremely interesting cross-overs, like THE LIGHT AGES.


CHRONICLES NETWORK: What do you think will be our new cultural myths for the 21st century? Do you see any new ones taking form right now?


LIZ WILLIAMS: I see some new ones, but I'm not sure that they are Western cultural myths. Chinese economic hegemony is one, and an Islamic world order is another. Those aren't our myths, but they're compelling to those who believe in them. At the moment, I'm afraid I find Western culture pretty vacuous.


CHRONICLES NETWORK: Your stint as a Tarot reader on Brighton Pier is mentioned pretty often, and it’s particularly interesting to me because I spent so many years as a professional card-reader myself. What deck do you use? Were you self-taught, or did someone teach you how to read the cards? To what extent have your own interests and/or life experiences changed the way you interpret the symbolic language of the Tarot?


LIZ WILLIAMS: I started off with the Rider-Waite deck and I still use it for readings because it's so straightforward. For my own use, I prefer an Arthurian deck, which ties in with Celtic imagery, or the Druidcraft tarot, which is one of the new ones and comes directly out of my own Druidic Order. I also use the Motherpeace - it's very New Age, but I like it.

I went on a brief course, but I'm mainly self-taught. A lot of my reading is intuitive; I pick up on things and run with them. Who knows where that comes from? But I think the tarot has its own animating spirit and one can connect with that. Much of my interpretation comes out of my own esoteric practice, which is mainly Druidic and semi-Wiccan (because my partner is a witch) these days.


CHRONICLES NETWORK: I will now ask you a question that people used to often ask me -- Have you used Tarot cards or Tarot symbolism in any of your stories?


LIZ WILLIAMS: I haven't used much, but I suspect that there is a degree of unconscious crossover.


CHRONICLES NETWORK: Some of the more bizarre human-animal crosses -- like the animus -- in BANNER OF SOULS reminded me of Paracelsus’s theories about the generation of monsters, and how hybrids might be sometimes created without sexual intercourse between the different species (sperm carried on the wind, or falling into water and being digested by fishes, etc.). With your background in the history of science, was anything like this in your mind when you were writing the book, or was it all based on speculation on where the biological sciences will go from here?


LIZ WILLIAMS: I'm very interested in Medieval and Renaissance alchemy and magic, to the point that I'm considering doing a MA in the history of Western esotericism. I have a lot of bestiaries, and the 'magical hybrid' idea comes from that. I'm about to do a Medieval short story about a hyaena cross - hyaenas come into my fiction a lot, as you'll see when you read DEMON AND THE CITY!


CHRONICLES NETWORK: When I was reading BANNER OF SOULS, and came across the concept of haunt-tech, it struck me that there was something vaguely Neoplatonic going on. Could you explain how haunt-tech is supposed to work?


LIZ WILLIAMS: Haunt-tech is based on the idea of everyday seances, with the power wielded by the dead channelled through gadgets rather than people. I wanted to play with the idea that there is a source of power, usually attained by adepts or magicians, which in this case is achieved through the application of science. I'm not sure how much the people in BANNER understand about their technology, however - I suspect it is mysterious to most people and experimented with by a small group of cognoscenti who almost certainly don't understand what they're doing.


CHRONICLES NETWORK: Do you remember what first inspired the idea, and how it developed?


LIZ WILLIAMS: It was actually inspired by my partner's death - just as I'd started to write the book, my partner died rather unexpectedly, and the book became more and more morbid as I worked on it. Which is what writers do, I guess: you take the experience available to you and exploit it ruthlessly.


CHRONICLES NETWORK: The scene in EMPIRE OF BONES where the future ship is engendered by a fusion of plant and human DNA, reading that, I was reminded of medieval and renaissance spells for creating a homunculus by fertilizing mandrake roots with human sperm, then animating them with human blood. IS the ship-seed supposed to be some kind of homunculus?


LIZ WILLIAMS: Yes, it is. I never took this idea as far as I wanted to, because a lot of people have used living ships and I couldn't see a way of doing it that wasn't cliched. But I'd like to return to that and in fact, you have given me an idea...


CHRONICLES: Final question -- do you have any predictions about the future of SF and Fantasy? Any fond hopes, or dire fears?


LIZ WILLIAMS: My fond hope is that I will continue to be published. My dire fear is that I won't. The industry is in a bad way right now. My other fond hope is that the smaller press will emerge to fill the gap. When I and the editors of Scheherazade magazine did an anthology some years ago, we called it “Shrew Press” - the idea being that our imprint was the little shrew running around the feet of the dinosaurs, and it would survive when they didn't.